


Kindred Spirits

by lastdream



Series: Superhero Shorts [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Fusion, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastdream/pseuds/lastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Go after the Black Widow, they said,” Grantaire mutters to himself. “It’ll be fun, they said.”</p><p>Actually, what they’d said was that it would be the most difficult assignment he’d ever been on, and if he didn’t take her out it would be because she’d taken him out first. Semantics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep/gifts).



> Um... so the prompt asked for Eponine and Grantaire being bros. I started writing and realized all of a sudden that I was doing it wrong, but I still kinda like what came out, so here it is. If I manage to actually fill the prompt correctly, I'll add that as a second chapter :)

Grantaire peers through the scope attached to his bow, and for the first time in a long time he needs more than a quick glance before he’s ready to fire. It’s hard to see through the team of highly trained, handpicked agents, even though they’re toppling one after another like so many dominoes. Meanwhile, the target looks like nothing so much as a girl doing cartwheels through fields of dandelions, knocking their fuzz to the wind by mistake. 

Well— vicious, high-speed cartwheels that scatter tactical knives and assault rifles and throw agents to the ground.

“Go after the Black Widow, they said,” Grantaire mutters to himself. “It’ll be fun, they said.”

Actually, what they’d said was that it would be the most difficult assignment he’d ever been on, and if he didn’t take her out it would be because she’d taken him out first. Semantics.

Grantaire looks over again, and all but two of the agents are down. 

We’re going to need more agents, he thinks. Cosette's going to kill me for losing so many of her ducklings.

To be fair, not all of the team are Cosette's ducklings, but all the best members are, and the Black Widow isn’t exactly taking prisoners. He only hopes she’s been too busy to get around to killing them all. As he hopes this, she flips over an agent’s shoulders and snaps his neck efficiently on the way down. 

And then something happens.

It’s just the Black Widow and Pontmercy left— Grantaire can tell by the shine of his arm— and Grantaire’s sure he’s about to lose not only a dear friend but the Captain’s decades-long husband, when the Black Widow backs off.

She drops the pilfered knife, steps away, and does a perfect swan dive out the window.

Grantaire is too stunned to take the clear shot he finally has, and by the time he’s recovered, the Black Widow’s grappling line has carried her far out of his field of vision. He looks back over at Pontmercy, and finds that the boy still hasn’t recovered his gun or any of the knives he started the mission with. 

“Pontmercy, are you or are you not the legendary Winter Soldier and the finest hand-to-hand combatant the Amis have ever seen?” Grantaire asks over the wire, trying not to facepalm. He leaps over the side of the building and begins pursuit of the Black Widow.

“Well… yes,” the infamous hardened assassin says sheepishly.

“You just lost all of your weapons in under a minute and then stood there while she took out your entire team.” It’s difficult to chew a teammate out while you’re chasing down a world-class spy and assassin, but Grantaire can make time on this occasion.

“Um.” Then, at last, Pontmercy seems to come out of his state of shock. “I thought I recognized her. You know how memories are jarring for me.”

Grantaire softens instantly. The return of memories is very traumatic, he knows, and sometimes only Cosette can pull Marius through an episode. With the Captain back at the tower, it must’ve been unutterably difficult even to stay upright during that fight. Seeing a flash of leather, Grantaire turns a corner. He isn’t far behind her now.

He realizes something, though, something that probably hasn’t even occurred to Pontmercy yet. 

With Pontmercy out of commission, the Black Widow could’ve killed him as easy as breathing, and she purposely left him alive throughout the whole fight. She didn’t just back off of him— she protected him. From herself.

As he runs, Grantaire begins to put pieces together. She must know him, and she must care for him a great deal. Moreover, those feelings aren’t returned, or if they are, Pontmercy doesn’t remember it. The Black Widow suddenly becomes a woman to Grantaire; she isn’t a killing machine, she isn’t an intelligence asset. She’s a woman in a lot of pain, and he’s trying to hunt her down. 

“Take care of whoever’s left,” he instructs Pontmercy, and then adds a reassuring, “You did good, kid.” Then he makes what is probably the most idiotic snap decision of his life. He take out his earpiece and tosses it into a girl’s drink as he passes by.

When Grantaire catches up to the Black Widow a minute later, he’s disarmed and disconnected completely. They’ve run into a dead end— not that it’s a real dead end, not for acrobats of their caliber, but neither of them wants to attempt parkour at this stage of a chase— and they’re both panting and tense and sizing each other up. She’s looking for weaknesses; Grantaire’s looking for an opening to announce his altered mission parameters.

After a moment, he finds one. She shifts just slightly, turns her stance into something a little more settled. She doesn’t intend to attack, at least not yet.

“I know you,” Grantaire says. The Black Widow snarls at him and looks like she would make a move if she were just slightly less intrigued. “Not actually literally, of course, but I understand how you must be feeling right now.”

“You can't know how I feel!” she barks back, and then the two of them stare at each other for a moment. Both of them falter in their combat postures. Then they’re both laughing helplessly, and neither of them can seem to stop for all the espionage training in the world. Apparently, not even the Red Room can prepare you for the realization that you are a fourteen-year-old brat at heart.

“Would you like some black nail polish?” Grantaire asks politely, once he has his breath back. “I keep some in my utility belt for those moments when I need to express my apathy during a mission.”

“Don’t worry, I have my own. It’s right next to the Nine Inch Nails mixtape.” Grantaire promptly cracks up again— which would be a perfect opportunity for the Black Widow to escape, but she doesn’t. Perhaps her curiosity about what he meant is outweighing her handlers’ directive to get out as soon as possible. If so, it’s more evidence for Grantaire’s developing theory that he won’t have to kill her after all.

“At last, I have found a kindred spirit,” he sighs. “Thirty-something going on teenaged, lover of vodka, hopelessly pining after someone who will probably never reciprocate…”

That transition was a thing of beauty, Grantaire thinks. Other transitions would look up to it in angsty jealousy if they were sentient. 

“He trained me, and that’s all,” the Black Widow says definitively. Grantaire raises an eyebrow at her. “It’s all you get without an explanation, which I am graciously allowing because you went out of your way to ditch the plastic explosives as well as the handguns.”

Grantaire takes a moment to wonder how she knew he was carrying plastic explosives at all, and then decides that it doesn’t matter. The important thing here is getting her to trust him, at least a little, and there’s only one way to do that.

He’s going to have to trust her first, and he’s going to have to be honest, because if he lies, she’ll know.

It makes him glad he lost the earpiece.

“I had a long infiltration mission. My cover was this— this insufferably hopeful, idealistic, big-headed… you know the type. And while I was him, I met a guy. I wanted to hate him, at first, ‘cause he was even more annoying than my cover was, but my cover would have liked him, so I stuck around. I listened, I participated, I played the good little activist. And then the worst possible thing happened.”

“He rubbed off on you?” The Black Widow is looking at him skeptically, like she thinks idealism might be a strain of flu.

“Only in the literal sense,” Grantaire chuckles. “I fell in love with him, for real. And he fell in love with my cover.”

“Oh,” is all the Black Widow says, but her eyes soften minutely. That’s good— she could just as easily have scolded him for the rookie mistake of allowing his real feelings into his work, which, to be fair, was a stupid mistake that deserves plentiful scolding.

“Eventually I couldn’t lie to him anymore. So he walked out. Didn’t hit me, didn’t say a word, just left.” There’s more to this story, of course— there’s the part where Grantaire followed him out, and begged, and pleaded, and the part where he pined in agony, and the part where he offered to give up Hawkeye entirely and maintain the cover for the rest of his life. “I would have given everything I was to him,” Grantaire says, though summing up the most painful period of his life in a few short words depresses him. “But he didn’t want me.”

For several long minutes, Grantaire and the Black Widow just look at each other. He is almost entirely exposed to her now, and she is considering whether to eat him alive. At last, she cocks her head in tacit question— “Why did you tell me this?”

“I don’t want to kill you,” says Grantaire. “And I don’t think I have to.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” she says sharply, and he shrugs. Maybe, maybe not. Then she sticks a hand out between them, open and empty— a handshake, Grantaire realizes. “Éponine,” she introduces herself.

“Grantaire,” he replies, taking her hand. She doesn’t use the opportunity to break his wrist or otherwise incapacitate him, and he smiles to show his appreciation. “Wanna go kill your handlers?” he asks, like he’s proposing a picnic or a glass of good vodka. The smile she gives him in return is as sharp as any of her blades.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The part where Grantaire and Éponine are actually bros. Also, their respective pining is addressed. (yes, that's what the new relationship tags are for)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took way too long and I'm sorry.

Grantaire wakes to hear the soft tread of booted feet in his living room. They're just loud enough to wake him, not loud enough to belong to an actual (incompetent) person who wants to kill him, and they're stepping in an uneven rhythm on the floor. It takes Grantaire a second to parse out the morse code: GET UP I HAVE NEWS.

Éponine is so polite, he thinks. As he shuffles out of bed and pulls on a shirt, his own walk spells IT IS 3AM.

SUCKS FOR YOU, she replies. It sounds like she's doing laps around his couch.

"So," Grantaire asks as he opens his bedroom door, "Why couldn't this wait until an hour of the day when normal humans are awake?"

"I'm sorry, did you just call yourself a normal human?"

"Point taken." There's an odd, anticipatory silence in which he sits down on his couch and notices the faint shine of a very expensive bottle of vodka on the coffee table. It's a bad sign; if they were going to get drunk together, she would've brought more alcohol, and cheaper. "Why did you bring me apology vodka?"

"Well," Éponine begins, and that's a bad sign too. She never hesitates, never stumbles over her words— Grantaire almost regrets his blackout curtains, because they make it impossible to read her expression. It's hard even at the best of times, but Grantaire likes to think that he's been able to see through her mask a little bit more, lately. Now she's trying to hide from him, and she's apologizing to him, and someone must have made her feel like she has to. His fingers itch for arrows. "Marius remembered me. Mostly, at least. He knows that he trained me, and that we were together, and that he almost got me out."

Grantaire cocks his head. "Isn't that—" He stops before he says the word 'good', because Éponine's fingers are tapping SHH on her thigh. Only she can make a pattern of long and short taps sound fierce.

"He came to tell me that he did," she continues, "and that he likes me just fine, but he won't cheat on his wife of seventy-odd years."

"Did you—"

"Of course I didn't ask him to!" Even in the dark, that is clearly the Black Widow's glare. She must really be on edge to think that he'd suggest that. Grantaire adjusts his body language so his silhouette will be as non-threatening as possible, silently asking her to calm down.

"Did you talk to Cosette?" he asks, getting the whole question out this time.

"That's why I brought the apology vodka." Éponine pauses like she's about to deliver a punchline (or maybe just a punch), and Grantaire waits patiently. "She kissed me and asked how I felt about joint custody."

"Congratulations," Grantaire says, heartfelt. And then, "Oh no."

"Thanks," replies Éponine, grinning widely. Her teeth are gleaming in the faint light, and her eyes are sparkling, and she's probably never looked so happy before in her entire life. She deserves it, Grantaire thinks, and then he rushes to cut her off again.

"Don't say it," he begs. "Last time someone said the c-word—"

"I'm very sorry, R," murmurs Éponine as she pats the top of his head consolingly, "but we're going to celebrate."

"Damn," he breathes. And then, because it's too late to take it back now, "Where are we going?"

"I found this club downtown, still open at this hour— good music, great bar, lets heroes go in armed— you'll like it. Get suited up."

When they're called to assemble with the rest of the Amis two hours later, neither of them is really surprised.

———

"Star Trek lied to me," Grantaire gripes into his earpiece. "Aliens are not friendly and logical. They are vicious and stupidly hard to kill."

"I'm sorry, are you having trouble? I'd be happy to help," Éponine says, sugar-sweet. "That last squadron got my muscles warmed up and I'm ready for a real fight."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should—" The rest of Grantaire's reply is lost in the chirrup of his ringtone, and he pauses with his fingers halfway to his quiver, wondering who on earth would be calling him in the middle of a fight. Literally all of his friends are also in this battle. "Hello?" he says as he fires off an explosive trick arrow. The troll-creature it hits bursts into flames, but manages to stagger around for an impressively long time before the shrapnel takes it down. Grantaire looks up and sees another of the troll things on his own rooftop, so he nocks another arrow (this one with an armor-piercing tip). He aims it straight for the alien's heart— er, center region. There might be a heart in there, maybe, he hopes—

"Grantaire?" 

Grantaire is Hawkeye, the greatest sniper in the world, the man who never misses a shot, and his arrow flies wild. Never mind the troll alien's heart; his own was pierced straight through by the voice he never expected to hear again in his waking hours. His fingers spasm in midair and his throat feels dry. He forgets that there is a giant troll about to kill him, he forgets that he is on a rooftop in the middle of a battle, he forgets that Éponine is shouting in his ear.

"Enj—" he begins.

But he never finishes, because that's when the troll reaches him.

———

Grantaire wakes to a throbbing in his side, a haze in his mind, and an argument being carried on over his head. He keeps his eyes closed as he tries to figure out where he is, and why, and who’s whisper-yelling about gender-role subversion ten inches above him.

It’s Enjolras, because of course it is. That was the easy question.

“Speaking as someone who was once programmable and had multiple entire languages downloaded into her brain: I have no idea what sixty percent of that jargon means.”

And the other person is Éponine. It must be, because no one else can say a sentence like that and still sound like an everyday girl you’d meet in a mall somewhere. Her underestimation tactics are unparalleled.

“And that’s exactly the problem! There’s a severe lack of awareness in this country, and in the world, and it’s caused by an education system that—“ Enjolras continues in this vein for some time, but Grantaire doesn’t pay a lot of attention, because this is one of those rants he’s long since memorized and filed away under “charming, but grossly impracticable."

Wait.

What are Enjolras and Éponine doing in the same room?

Grantaire considers that the presence of both of them means that it’s probably a safe environment, so he groans and cracks one eye open. He glances around briefly and realizes that he’s in an unfamiliar house, and he and Éponine are still mostly in combat gear, and Enjolras is wearing a flowery sundress with a long braid wound over his shoulder.

That explains a few things, at least.

“He’s trying to prove that men can do girly things too,” he translates to Éponine. He’s slurring his words a bit, but she’s an international superspy. She can handle it. “Why do I hurt so much?” he asks as he cranes his neck, trying to get a look at his own side but not quite managing it before his body screams in protest. 

“Well, it’s hard to say,” says Éponine, tilting her head. “The prevailing theory is that it’s because of the cracked ribs.”

“Makes sense, makes sense,” murmurs Grantaire with a reasonable sort of nod. "How many?"

"Three for sure, and a few others are fractured. You also have extensive bruising, but I don't think any of your internal organs are damaged," she says. Her voice has gone sort of toneless, the way it does when she's just reporting facts.

"You almost died!" Enjolras exclaims, and he isn't toneless at all. It's kind of pleasant, the way he's worked up over Grantaire's injuries.

"Oh, shush," Grantaire replies, waving a hand as he levers himself into a sitting position. "I've had worse shaving."

"That doesn't even make sense," says Enjolras. His glare is reaching truly epic proportions, and yet somehow only makes him even more devastatingly beautiful. Clearly, his skin contains some kind of magic and/or alien technology that should definitely be studied in depth. "You shouldn't have let yourself get hurt like this."

"Aw, sweetheart, it's like you care," Grantaire says, neglecting to mention that it was Enjolras who distracted him and got him hurt in the first place. The words are bitter, calculated less to hurt Enjolras and more for self-immolation. Grantaire needs to kill the little spark inside of him before it grows into hope— and from hope, expectation. He learned a long time ago that the spark is going to be killed anyway, and it hurts less when he does it quickly than when he waits for Enjolras to do it.

"I do care," says Enjolras, and that's not fair, it isn't fair, he can't say things like that.

"Please don't," Grantaire croaks.

"You hurt me," Enjolras begins, and Grantaire knows it's true. Hearing it, though, is like a physical wound. He hunches in on himself. "But I hurt you too. It took me too long to realize how much. Can we talk?"

Grantaire wants to reply, but all he can do is nod and draw a shuddering breath. It makes his ribs ache, but he doesn't care. The hope is real this time, not a trick or an invention of his longing heart. Éponine's hand on his shoulder makes him remember her presence, and makes him understand what must have given Enjolras his realization. She's a better friend than he deserves.

"Let me know when you're ready for the c-word," she whispers in his ear, and she gives them their privacy.

**Author's Note:**

> The request for superhero/LM fusion prompts still stands! I'll try to be faster on the next one of course :)


End file.
